Having a nice little wander through the school recipe book I inherited from my mother-in-law who was in charge of a school kitchen in the 1950’s and 60’s, I see there is a selection of biscuits on offer. There are all sorts of nice sounding bikkies on offer, although I think ‘chocolate Afghans’ would have to have a name change. They sound quite nice, butter and sugar creamed together, mixed with flour, cocoa, dried milk and cornflakes, pressed into tins and baked for 30 minutes and cut into fingers while still warm.

All the recipes are for hundreds of biscuits, it’s for a school after all, so if I get really tempted I’ll have to so some maths to work out the quantities. Mock macaroons, oatmeal crunchies, oatflake shortbread, twin shortie biscuits, wheatflake biscuits, birds nests, and these, ‘man in the moon biscuits’:

4 lbs flour

2½ lbs margarine

1½ lbs caster sugar

4 eggs

a few currants soaked for ½ hour

cream the fat and sugar and add the eggs

add a third of the flour and cream well

add the rest of the flour and knead until quite smooth

roll out 1/8 inch thick and cut into crescent-shaped biscuits using a 3 inch cutter

on the inner side of the crescent make a small diagonal cut to indicate a mouth and used a soaked currant for the eye

bake in a moderate oven

dredge with castor sugar while still warm

Imagine the school dinner ladies, making hundreds of crescent-shaped biscuits and cutting little mouths and adding little curranty eyes!